GZ and all- Not sure to put this Oliver Stone trash, but knew you would want to see it...He is really some "piece of work"....and that isn't meant kindly. I will never see another film of his. And hope others will follow suit.
Stone knocks Bush
Director talks film, politics
by Justin Brenneman
Staff Writer
nyunews.com
Director Oliver Stone criticized recent American military decisions and spoke about his struggles in adapting history to the screen in a question-and-answer session held Friday night at Cantor Film Center.
Stone, a two-time Academy Award-winning director, fielded questions from a crowd of over 100 students, most of them from the film and television department in Tisch School of the Arts. The event was part of the twice-weekly Director's Series organized by the department.
While the session was designed to focus on Stone's directing career, many students asked about his notoriously liberal political beliefs. Although he declined to address the events of Sept. 11 directly, saying he feared a media circus, Stone frequently referred to current political issues in answering questions about his life.
When one student asked why Stone wanted to fight in the Vietnam War, the director said he had been "another person" at the time, one influenced by misguided war fervor. He compared the fervor over Vietnam to the present war on terrorism.
"[I thought] very much like the way [President George W.] Bush thinks now. Of course, I was 15," Stone said, to laughter from the crowd. "They don't want to take any casualties, so they won't put any men on the passes in Pakistan to try and catch [Osama bin Laden]. They won't even try. You know, they don't want to take 25, 50, 100 casualties. They're scared.
"[Bush says] 'We're pursuing terrorists,'" Stone said. "No, George, you're not. You're a flake. Be serious. Override the Pentagon. Take casualties, if you've got the guts. But don't go starting another war with Iraq that could be far more devastating in its implications for us."
The government has changed its policy toward the media in the decades since Vietnam, Stone said.
"It's a very strange time," he said of the post-Vietnam era. "I think the powers that be, these Karl Roves, these geniuses, these think-tank people with a lot of money, said, 'The next time, we have to put a muzzle on the media. This was a major problem for us.' And I think they've very effectively, not completely, but done a lot to move it in that direction.
"Tom Daschle cannot stand up and make a statement, or [former Vice President Al] Gore, for that matter, without being ridiculed - ridiculed - across the country for statements, frankly, that are sane," Stone said. "They're not insane. They would have easily been abided in the '50s or in the '60s, in the worst period of McCarthyism. It seems that we're [now] more to the right of McCarthy."
Many students asked Stone, a Tisch alumnus known for such controversial films as "Platoon," "JFK" and "Natural Born Killers," about how current events influenced his work, but the director said today's climate made such "hard-edged, political films" difficult to make.
"You're kidding yourself if you think you can do it through the [studio] system," Stone said. "[Even] in the 10 years since 'JFK' [was released], for example, the studios have become more concentric. You know, they're not bad people. They're middle-of-the-road people."
Stone, who answered questions for approximately 90 minutes, also discussed the film about Alexander the Great he was preparing to direct. In fact, he said he submitted the third draft of the script to the studio just one hour prior to arriving at NYU.
"It's the most complicated script I ever wrote," Stone said. "It's the events of his life that are so enormous. And frankly, I have no illusions as to understanding who he was. I'm going with my instinct and research."
A similar film in development by "Moulin Rouge" director Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, does "complicate" matters, Stone said. He predicted that the success of both projects would ultimately come down to the quality of their scripts.
Stone referenced "Moulin Rouge" again when a student asked him about the greater emphasis on style over story in current films.
"I think if you make a film like that, you fail," Stone said. "As much as Baz is talented with 'Romeo and Juliet,' I don't know what 'Moulin Rouge' is about."
Stone said his Alexander movie, set to star Colin Farrell of "Minority Report" fame, would "adhere to the spirit" of the material while transposing certain historical events for dramatic effect.
"You look for the overall themes," Stone said.
He cited recent movies such as "A Beautiful Mind," "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers" as examples of films that distorted history.
Stone said he was also looking for an American distributor for a documentary recently released in France that he filmed earlier this year. He said the film, "Five Days in Palestine," was a "pretty wacky" look at his time spent interviewing people on the street during an Israeli invasion. • |
